Water problems

We tried to fill the new reserve water tank today. It filled well. But, a few minutes later the tank toppled over!

foundation not level and/or firm enough

Let’s start at the beginning…

One of the challenges of living in Panama is that services we take for granted in Europe and largely in the US too, are not available 24/7. The internet via fibreoptics is the exception - that’s super reliable! We had onle 2outages in more than 2 years. It is faster and better than the internet connection my family has in rural Austria!

Well, electricity and water are a totally different story!

The water association that supplies the hostal sends water only every morning from about 6 to about 10. If you want to have water during the other hours of the day, you need to have a reserve water tank. And, if that tank is not placed about 2 m (7 ft) above the highest shower head, you also need a pump.

We had 2 such tanks installed, with a combined volume of about 2,100 liters (600 gallons). And we had a pump installed as well.

During the high season we had at times 15+ guests staying with us, plus us two, and 2 workers. It turned out, the capacity of these tanks was not enough! Every evening the tanks were empty, and during the night there was no water for the toilets or the sinks.

So we replaced the 1100 liter tank with a 1700 liter one, and tried to find space for more tanks. Instead of only the swimming pool tank, we placed two more drinking water tanks next to the pool, and created an involved system of tubes from and to where the original water supply was connected to the system in the house.

Tank farm - pool tank, plus two reserve water tanks

Reserve tanks on and under platform, pool tank to the left

With that, I thought, we should be ready for the next main season…

It’s the low season right now, and we have only one guest. So the original 1000 liter tank was quite sufficient. But, yesterday, our neighbor told us, that power company cut the power supply to the association’s water turbine! Apparently, they didn’t pay the electricity bill for 3 months! Today would be the last time we would receive water, until that situation is cleared up!

So we got up early this morning and started filling all our reserve tanks. 5400 liters (1400 gallons)! That should keep us hydrated for a week or so. Hopefully they will have figured out a solution to get the water flowing again by then!

Well, once the first tank was filled, it toppled over!🤦‍♂️ 1,700 kg leaning against the washing machine and the drain pipe from the second floor! 😫

Luckily, the other big tank wasn’t full yet, so I was able to find a way to pump the water from the damaged tank into the other one. Phew! But 1700 liters less in reserve… 🤷‍♂️😩

Let’s see if the damaged tank is salvageable. First, i need to put a concrete slap, to ensure nothing is moving anymore, then try to straighten out the tank’s side, and probably also adjust the tubing as the level has changed… 

There I was, thinking I would retire and have an easy life! 😝 Instead I ended up getting sucked into building two homes, and operating a hostal, plus helping run a restaurant! 🤦‍♂️🤪🤷‍♂️

Well, one day, maybe, retirement hits me too… 👍😊👍

Regrets…

 The topic of regrets comes up every now and then in conversations. And so far, there is not much in my life that I regret. Having had to leave my daughter and son in Austria when I migrated to the US after the divorce was the only thing that would come to mind…

Today, I realized another thing that I regret…

When we came home to the hostal this evening after closing the restaurant we found all the guests gathered around the kitchen table chatting, having fun, planning the evening together. They decided to go to the beach together to see if they might encounter luminescent plankton… What a great experience for them! Different nations, different walks of life, joining on an adventure together!

This makes me so happy! As this was the big goal behind the effort of building this hostal! All the hard work over the last three years, the stresses and challenges, it all paid off! The experiment succeeded! Yeay!

So what’s the regret, you might ask. Well, most of my career I was a consultant/contractor. I was always travelling. And almost always solo. I used to say, the only bad thing about this type of work is, that I have to eat alone every night…

Today I realized, I should have looked for hostals, instead of hotels!!! Then I would always have come home to a bunch of interesting and interested people, instead of an empty hotel room. I could have shared the meal time with other travellers, exchanged stories and ideas, built friendships with people from all over the planet! Not having thought of this earlier, that is my other regret!

About sustainability and environmental impact of Hostal/Homestay Un Mundo

When designing and building our Hostal/Homestay Un Mundo in Santa Catalina, Soná, Veraguas, Panama I had sustainability and environmental impact in the forefront of my mind. 

there’s only 1 world. we have only 1 planet to live on. we’re only 1 people. let’s all work together, not against each other!

Hostalworld, which is one of the booking site on which we are listed, sent an email today encouraging their partners to think more about these topics. The recommendations they gave are good, yet only a small part of what we tried to do here. I thought I write a little bit about these topics various ways we made sustainability and impact a driving and deciding factor…

They also did some research comparing hostals with hotels, and found, based on their estimates, that hotels have 4 times as much of a negative impact. This report can be found here. The exact number, of course, is dependent on the quality of the estimates. But, it’s pretty obvious that if the average persons per room (and bathroom) is higher, the per bed amount of material and energy used for construction is smaller, and operations and maintenance of that space is less involved as well.

In our case, though, we applied a building style and used materials during construction that have a much better sustainability score than the typical or average construction.

Here some aspects:

* We don’t use concrete walls, but wood - concrete is a very strong CO2 source. Also, concrete soaks up the heat of the sun, turning rooms into baking ovens. Wood, on the other hand, acts as an insulation!

* Our walls are not solid, but are mostly thin lattice with quite wide gaps. There’s always a breeze in the room. And the cool night air can easily enter the room. To protect against mosquitoes we wrapped the whole house in insect screens.

* Roofs in Panama are mostly made of sheet metal. Ever touched some metal that was laying in the sun for a while? It gets very quickly very hot! If the roof touches the concrete all that heat gets absorbed and stored by the concrete. We have the roof far removed from concrete. Although the mansard apartment gets very hot during the day, by 18:00 it’s already cooled down enough to be comfortable again. And during the night I need a sheet to cover because it’s too cold without it!

* Our wood was resourced at the closest sawmill, which gets its wood from the forest behind their house. With that the transportation distances for the wood was minimal.

all the wood is sourced locally or repurposed

* We use only local wood (except the doors, which are prefabricated, made of pine, and transported). For walls that can get wet from the rain we use teak. For other purposes we used whatever type the sawmill had available that day.

* While we bought lots of normal boards, too, we also used many “chapones” - these are the first pieces of wood sawed off a log. They are rounded and with bark. Usually, these boards are discarded. We removed the bark, and cut lattice from them, with which we built the side walls. That wood, thus, is not rotting putting the carbon in the form of CO2 back into the atmosphere, instead the carbon stays bound as wood in our walls.

* Virtually all other hotels and hostals in the area need air conditioning to achieve a comfortable sleeping environment. We don’t need a/c - thus, our electricity bill is around 40$/month, instead of 300$ or more.

* The high humidity in the air causes mold and mildew, if there’s no air is not moving. Usually, people fight this by using harsh chemicals frequently on all surfaces. By having a very airy wall design, the air is always moving, so we do not need to apply such chemicals - which is healthier for the inhabitants and better for the environment, too.

large windows add to the breeziness of the rooms

long time no post…

 I haven’t written anything in a long while! I guess, it was just too busy a time, the last few months…

With mid December the rainy season came to an end, and with the dry season came the season for tourists. On the northern hemisphere, this is the cold time, and many people flock to the tropics to avoid the ice and snow. 

By mid January we had our first dormitory, two of the toilets and one of the showers ready, so we decided to try to put it on Hostalworld and AirBnB. 

curtains to add privacy

very rustic, but functional

Whao! We very quickly got many guests! And, what is even more exciting, many of them extended several days beyond what they booked!

Even though we still were working on the second, larger dormitory, and there was a lot of dust and materials between the entrance to the floor and the ready dormitory, the feedback we received was very positive. 

upstairs are dormitories, downstairs a private room and dormitory for workers and volunteers

I tried to build in a way that allows us to get by without air condition and that folks are not locked away and isolated from the world. There are big spaces between the lattice that make up the wall on one side, and on the other side there’s more window than wall. We wrapped the whole house in mosquito netting, to ensure that no insects crawl around the people while sleeping. Still, there’s a breeze in the room all the time, and in the night the cool, fresh air fills the room. 

It all was an experiment. I am happy it worked out well! Most of our guests appreciate the design a lot. You can hear the sounds of the night like in a tent, but with the comfort of a real bed…

Having many guests in the hostal, often many guests also in the evenings at the restaurant, and continuing the work at the hostal, driving to the 2 1/2 hr away Santiago to find materials for the construction and ingredients for the restaurant, it was a super busy time!

There’s much more to talk about! I guess, I’ll write some more posts later…

sunset at the village beach

For now: greetings from lovely Santa Catalina, Soná, Veraguas, Panamá…

Trump - beloved the world around…

There’s a custom for new year’s celebrations in Panama to build a puppet and burn it around midnight on 31st of December.

Well, the people in Panama didn’t appreciate Trump’s last brainless comment in a string of such, where he mused about taking control of the Panama Canal. I happen to drive by a pair of such puppets today, ready to be burnt…

 

On first sight maybe amusing. But knowing how Panamanians feel about the canal, this is a clear signal to Trump about what would expect him should he be stupid enough (which he often proved to be) to try to follow through with this idea: All the people of Panama resisting! 

Panama has no military. But he would have to fight all the civilians! Men, women, and children! Would his military comply with his orders? Would turn them into war criminals right away… If they would, how would the Europeans react? How would Russia react to a break in Nato? How would the Chinese react? 

Many questions, which nobody at this time can answer for sure. But I hope we never have to find out in reality…

Sounds a bit sarcastic, but still: happy new year! Happy new quarter century!  

who needs a spare tire…

I recently read somewhere that newer cars don’t have a spare tire anymore. Instead, there’s a pump you can plug in to the cigarette lighter. Well… Maybe that’s a useful alternative if you live in a place where roads are well maintained! Here in Panama a spare tire is absolutely necessary!

I don’t remember ever getting a flat tire while driving. Ever! In 40 years of driving! Well, no, in 39 years…In the last two years I needed to put on the spare tire 12 times! And replace - that means buy! - a new tire 8 times!!!

Why? Because the roads in Panama are treacherous! Even the autopistas around Panama City and the interamerican highway have many potholes, which haven’t been fixed in a long time. The heavy rains, of course, are not helping the situation, but wash out these holes further and further…

The side roads are sometimes even worse! And the last 17 km of the road to Santa Catalina are, well, a disgrace, to put it mildly! I had to replace the suspensions on both cars sine living here! Also a first in my life!

So, you drive on what appears to be a road in reasonably good condition, and suddenly there’s one of those monster holes! With experience (of which I have PLENTY!), it is often possible to avoid getting a tire hitting that hole by performing an emergency slalom move. But sometimes it’s not possible - because there’s a car next to you, or because there are several such holes and the best you can do is to choose the one (or ones) that are the smallest problem, or because you noticed the severity of the hole too late.

And when that happens, the tire (or two or four) get a big bang squeeze against the rim. And all too often the sidewall of the tire gets damaged.

Now, if you get a nail or screw in the running pane of the tire, it’s bad enough. But that’s very easy to fix! I, and many other drivers, carry the plugs in the car, to be able to fix that kind of problem anywhere along the road. Plus a 12V pump is also in both of my cars. 

But, when the tire‘s sidewall is damaged you cannot fix it reliably.

Thus, an otherwise brand new tire needs to be discarded and replaced!

That’s what happened to me already 8 times over the last 2 years…

Funny! I stopped buying higher quality - i. e. higher priced - tires, and am now getting the cheapest I can find! I wonder why? If I even have a choice - most of the little “llanterias” (tire repair stores) don’t carry much options; you’re lucky if they have any tire at the size you need! And if they don’t, well, then they vulcanize your tire’s sidewall and send you on your way…

Luckily, the speed limits here are very low, so even if the tire blows while you’re driving, you should be able to safely stop the car… At least, so I hope…

A related further adventure started about six weeks ago. A tire blew on my Prius, and as usual I put on the donut. However, on the way to the llateria - which is about 60 km (almost 40 miles), that 20 year old tire gave up the ghost, too… Hitchhiking with the broken original tire the rest of the way, and back, is standard procedure… The real problem, though, is: where to get a replacement donut?!?

Impossible to find a tire that fits on the donut rim. It’s not a radial tire, but the old fashioned technology. First I thought of visiting junk yards to find an old Prius from which I can source such a donut. But then it dawned on me, that it probably won’t be much of use anymore - being also 20 years old, and having been exposed to sun and rain for who knows how long in the yard…

Alright, so let me see if I find a rim that’s the same size as the regular rims, and put a regular tire on it. It won’t be possible to put that tire in the space where the donut is, because the donut has a slightly smaller diameter and is only about 2/3 of the width. But, hey, I just put it behind the driver seat. Being on the road here without a tire is highly unadvisable! And usually I don’t have more than 2 passengers anyhow… Panama helps you improve your improvisation skills!

About four weeks ago I found and bought such a rim, and had a tire installed on it, too. Yeay! I’m safe! At least so I thought…

Yesterday, on the way back from Panama City, I hit a monster hole again - on the Centennial Bridge across the Panama Canal (center lane, direction leaving the city, at the gap between the bridge and the bridgehead; for those who are travelling that stretch…). I stopped and checked, but all tires seemed to be ok… 

90 km down the road, however, one tire blew… again! 

Alright, first try to simply pump it up again - maybe it’s just the seal between rim and tire that leaked. No such luck! So, unpack the loaded car to get at the car-jacks - the Prius is so low I need to lift it in stages using two hydraulic jacks - take wheel with torn tire off, put on the new rim…

But, when the spare wheel was on, it turns out that the nuts’ outside diameter is larger than the holes on that damn “pretty” rim!!!

So back to hitchhicking, buying new tire, hitchhiking back, taking new rim off and store it, and putting on wheel with new tire… 

And later trying to find nuts whose inner diameter fits the bolts, and whose outer diameter fits the holes on the rim. Now, the nut loosing tool doesn’t fit anymore either! So need to buy a socket that serves as adaptor between the fancy nuts and the loosening tool… And find a good spot in the car to carry these items around, for when the next tire gives up the ghost…

I’m hoping, that new spare wheel actually will serve its purpose… we’ll see…

rain, rain, rain - this time in Panama!

Well, rainy season it is! The last week and a half we had A LOT of rain. When we came back from Chiriquí we found the restaurant flooded. After driving most of the day, we spent the evening cleaning out the flood.

the soil in the dining terrace floor already told the story

the space with the bar is the lowes part of the house - today a pool, a muddy one

The same night, it flooded again!

And finally, on Saturday, it came down in buckets again - this time in the evening while we were there, so I could see where and how the water got into the restaurant. We worked all evening: Iris made 14 pizzas, thankfully all but 2 were to-go orders. My trusted worker Wilvert and me tried to broom out and scoop up the water as it came inside.

On Monday, we increased the height of the separating wall all around, and dug little trenches to entice the water to take other routes than to flood the restaurant.

Wilvert, next to our piece of ingenuity… 🤪

Well, today, it’s coming down again in buckets! 

The view from the front terrace at the hostal

So glad we have worked on the restaurant already! It would definitely be flooded again with all that rain!

The little riverbed we cut into the terrace floor here at the hostal works, too. Through it, the water that comes down the hill in the back of the house is leaving without causing damage.

Rain runoff from hill no longer floods the house

River bed crossing the terrace

On the other side of the property, another river develops from the runoff of the other hill. Also running down in an orderly fashion. Yeay! Just on the bottom of the property we might need to provide more guidance, I guess…

Surrounded by water… 😝

When you don’t have to worry about flooding, it is actually a very beautiful thing! Soothing sounds, feeling of being protected and safe - I could watch and listen to the rain for hours! Yet, it rains like this only for 1/2 hour, then quiets down for a few hours, before the next downpour…